Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Ukraine Seen Forming New Military ‘Troika’ with Lithuania and Poland

Paul
Goble

Staunton, November 26 – Having reluctantly
concluded that it will not get the assistance it needs from NATO as a whole,
the Ukrainian government is seeking to obtain it by developing military ties
with Lithuania and Poland, a move both Vilnius and Warsaw appear receptive to,
according to “Nezavisimaya gazeta.”

In an article in today’s issue,
Tatyana Ivzhenko, the paper’s Kyiv correspondent, says that was one of the results
of the just-completed meeting of Dalia Grybauskaite with her Ukrainian
counterpart Petro Poroshenko and reflects ongoing discussions with Poland about
military supplies as well (ng.ru/cis/2014-11-26/7_kiev.html).

Some
in Kyiv are comparing this new “troika” with GUAM, while some in Moscow are
suggesting that this is just a cover for NATO to send arms to Ukraine. Neither
view, Ukrainian experts say, is entirely justified, arguing the resources of
Lithuania and Poland are less than many think and that NATO won’t use such a
bloc as cover for sending military aid.

Sergey Taran, a
political analyst at the International Institute for Democracy, says that there
are three reasons why this new “troika” is not like GUAM. First, he said, he “would
not exaggerate the role of the US now” in promoting it. Second, GUAM was “thought
up as a union” of countries with common economic and energy issues. This one is
about defense.

And
third, he says, “Russia could employ a variety of effective instruments against
GUAM, but now, it is not having nay opportunities for influencing the ‘troika’
besides intimidation and economic pressure.” Thus, the new group may be more
rather than less significant than GUAM has been.

At
the same time, Taran argues, the West will not send any military aid via
Lithuania or Poland until after Kyiv makes progress on economic reform and
fighting corruption, as US Vice President Joseph Biden made clear during his
recent visit to the Ukrainian capital.

Sergey
Zgurets, a military affairs expert at the Kyiv Center for Research on the
Military, Convergence and Disarmament, says that neither Lithuania nor Poland
has sufficient resources to help Ukraine in a major way, although Kyiv, given
the pressure it is under from Russian aggression, will be happy to get anything
from them it can.

He adds
that “Western countries will not begin to make use of Lithuania as a cover for
supplying arms and technology to Ukraine.” But that does not mean that
individual members of the alliance cannot do what they want within the limits
of their capacities, and that fact is driving Kyiv’s policies.

The
Ukrainian government is trying to meet Western demands for economic reform and
fighting corruption, but it has little hope that the Western alliance will
provide it with the tools it needs to combat Russian aggression in the east.
Consequently, it must rely on itself and on those of its neighbors who share its
concerns about Russian intentions.

“Ukraine,
considering that the path to NATO will be very long is already seeking to
create intermediate unions which will allow it to increase its defense
capacity,” Zguryets says. “It is logical that Lithuania and Poland will become
its allies” because “like Ukraine, they see Russia as a threat to their
security.”